


Blue-Black

by alcyoneaeolides



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Anxiety, Cutting, Flashbacks, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Induced Psychosis, M/M, Mental Instability, Panic Attacks, Psychosis, Self-Doubt, Songfic, Suicide Attempt, Synesthesia, Therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-06
Updated: 2016-12-06
Packaged: 2018-09-06 22:05:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8771116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alcyoneaeolides/pseuds/alcyoneaeolides
Summary: this is just an alternative ending to the forest fic. all credits go to original author.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ams_park3r](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ams_park3r/gifts).
  * Inspired by [stay in place (sing a chorus)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1822504) by [SoloChaos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SoloChaos/pseuds/SoloChaos). 



> An alternative ending to "Stay In Place (Sing A Chorus)".

|-/

The rain falls quietly behind his eyes; from his eyes. Tyler stifles a sob and rocks backwards, still curled up in a ball, the bruise on his face throbbing at the memory of what happened. He shouldn’t cry. He wouldn’t cry. Because Blurryface didn’t like that, and Blurryface would be red-green-orange — ‘Angry,’ they called it.

Red-green-orange fit so much better.

But Tyler wasn’t red-green-orange, he was blue-black. 

Everything was blue-black.

|-/

Everything is blue and everything is black, and then he is reborn in an instant into a place where everything is yellow in a world full of hurt, where the light dances before his eyes and his heart beats feebly like the fluttering of a dying sparrow. And suddenly everything is alright when it shouldn’t have been, and it made him uneasy. 

Because yellow’s the best way to describe it; because yellow’s the only way he knows how to describe it; the calm just before the sunrise and the sound of Gm7 chords and the smell of the tundra, sharp and white and deadly — like a blade, the type he uses to split open his flesh in order to expose his soul.

From the depths of his haunted mind, the skeletal face of Blurryface laughs somewhere, a dissonant, ugly blue-purple sound that reminds him of batting cages and the slick rain that never stopped falling behind his eyes. And then he was free and he was lost and he was saved and he was gone, all at the same time, until everything was overwhelming and too much.

And now his blood flows freely from gaping wrists, black and half-congealed, like all the positivity has corrupted and rotted away inside him after being bottled up for so long, and he watches his body festering from the inside out and feels his soul draining away like blood in a sink and he smiles, for he knows it is the end.

Tyler chooses to embrace that.

|-/

“The sky… it’s —”  
“Red-orange today, because ‘now the night is coming to an end, the sun will rise and we will try again.’ I know, Tyler. You’ve said that at least five times now.” Doctor Jenna smiles, and Tyler shudders at the steely blankness in her eyes, like his own purple-red acceptance of everything — bleak and unprotesting. Stiff and resigned, he means.

Her question brings him back to focus, restrains him just as he is beginning to float away. He struggles against the angry tendrils of her voice that wrap themselves around him and hold him tight. He doesn’t want to listen to her pine-needle voice anymore, sharp and piercing, but he has to.

“Last session, we talked about drowning and what the colours represented. Is that right?”  
“Yes,” Tyler mumbles, eyes focused on his ragged fingernails that he doesn’t remember biting. So many things he doesn’t remember. So many things he chooses to forget.  
“And you said the you felt…” Here, she flicks through her notes until she finds what she is looking for. “Like you were drowning, and that everything was blue-black. So you feel overwhelmed and alone most of the time?”  
“Blurryface makes me blue-black. Blurryface makes me me.”

“Blurryface — that’s right. Blurryface. Have you had any more visits from him recently?” Of course, she doesn’t really believe that Tyler is haunted, and definitely not by the physical manifestation of his demons. She’s just doing her job, after all. 

But Tyler is determined to beat her at her own game. “He just watches.”

Liar, Blurryface says quietly, his presence marked by a shadow at the corner of Tyler’s eye that disappears when he turns to look. Go away, you’re not real, Tyler screams silently, noticing the doctor’s expression change, ever-so-slightly to the orange-green-purple of confusion as she notices the veins on his forehead stand out with the effort.

“But you don’t have to listen to him." She's met with a silence that seems invasive. Flicking through her notes again, she finds something of interest. 

“Have you been in the treehouse lately?” Tyler nods. “Can you describe it to me?”

[A safe space. A place where his sanity isn’t on a hitlist. Dewy with shadows but not menacing.] He refuses to expose such a raw part of himself.

The doctor pauses, and looks at his balled-up fists that are hanging limply by his side. “Let me see your knuckles.” Tyler obediently turns his hands palm-down and extends both to Doctor Jenna, staring at the angry red scrapes with fascination like he doesn’t know how they got there.

He would much rather forget how they got there than relive the moment he got them.

The doctor rubs one of his knuckles slowly like she’s disappointed in him, something yellow-blue-red in that action. But then it all comes spilling out in a rush of words that claw their way out of his mouth angrily, because no one’s ever been concerned about him. And it’s too late, he’s telling her everything, and Blurryface is furious.

“It hurts, but I need to keep doing it, I know I shouldn’t but I can’t stop. Doctor… I find myself trapped in loops all the time, punching the walls until my knuckles bleed and I’m screaming but not in pain and — I can’t stop, okay? And these loops are slowly destroying me, I know, but the harder I fight them the more it hurts — help me, Doctor, please! And I’m afraid of what’s around the corner and I know I shouldn’t be but I can’t stop, I just can’t. I’m sorry, don’t hate me, please.” And he exhales, because maybe that wasn’t so bad. And then he has a panic attack, because Blurryface has reappeared, more red-green-orange than Tyler’s ever recalled him being.

Glowing eyes in the darkness. His name being whispered and the feeling of being watched. His lungs being crushed like all his hopes and dreams.

Blurryface’s hands are wrapped around his neck, choking the life from him, and he needs to fight back but he can’t and then Blurryface is swimming dizzily in front of him and Doctor Jenna and the clinic is gone and it’s just him and Blurryface in a dark room with a swaying light. He rips the invisible hands from his throat frantically and throws his head back and screams. Tyler’s gone; just Blurryface now. And then Tyler claws at his face at an attempt to reclaim himself, until Blurryface hits him and he jerks uncontrollably. “Tyler,” someone says, an alarm going off, and he’s not sure if that’s part of his raving memories or a flashback or a coping mechanism he’s created to explain Blurryface until he feels hands on his shoulder, shaking him.

Josh. He needs Josh, he wants Josh, but Josh isn’t here and maybe he isn’t real.

“Tyler,” the voice says more insistently, and Blurryface loosens his hold over Tyler for a fraction of a second. Just enough for him to reclaim more of his mind.

“Tyler!” someone screams. The grey room with the exposed lightbulb vanishes, and Tyler is suddenly aware of the shadows that are Blurryface watching and he struggles to banish them from his mind. He’s on the floor with no recollection of how he got there, and he can hear Doctor Jenna instructing him to breathe in and out faintly in the background; trembles as he tries to relax his balled fists. Her gunmetal-blue eyes flash dangerously red for a moment, dangerously similar to Blurryface’s, and it almost triggers another panic attack until he realises she’s here to help.

None of this is real.

The room sways around him, and his lungs are failing him, he chokes and claws at his chest and wheezes desperately and it’s too late, he’s gone, and then he’s saved. The hands on his back are gone now, and he realises the assistants are here as they hold out a pill and a cup of water to him. That must have been one of my worse attacks. He takes the cup in a shaky hand and spills most of it onto his crotch as he struggles to sit up. The pill doesn’t slide down his throat as it usually does, but catches in his dry throat until he is forced to spit it out. Blurryface laughs in that orange way he has, and Tyler automatically flinches because he’s T-E-R-R-I-F-I-E-D.

He'll never be rid of his demons. He'll never be able to move on.

Doctor Jenna dismisses the assistants and the alarm is switched off, then continues hesitantly after watching his reaction. “Tyler…” she says in a pained voice. “I think it’s time for you to start using new medication, because I think that’s what’s best for you. You’re safe here, Blurryface holds no power over you. Don’t let him make you afraid, because he isn’t real.” There’s an audible silence, in which nothing moves, save for Blurryface reappearing by Tyler’s side. Don’t look, Tyler tells himself. Blurryface smiles, a grisly contortion of his skeletal features, and laughs. 

[Using glowing cigarette stubs to mark his body as his own. Lighting matches to watch the darkness creep up them slowly. Examining his body in the mirror in an attempt to find an imperfection, any imperfection. Listening to Blurryface repeat the phrase “Down the road, not across the street.” Giving in and not being able to keep going.]

“Okay,” says Tyler, surprising the doctor and himself.

|-/

“Father?” Tyler whispers, looking up at the ceiling, hands clasped together. “Are you there? Oh, Father, I feel so dirty for what I’ve done, dirty and impure— forgive me, please. And I want to cleanse myself but I can’t, and I want to cut myself but I can’t, and I just want to die.” He sniffles.

“Take my life, take my soul, just end this, Father, please, don't let me be gone-”

His small frame is wracked with heaving, choking sobs until he’s too exhausted to keep his eyes open any longer; he falls asleep, knowing that when he wakes up at least he will have survived.

|-/

Josh seems very real when he's in Tyler’s treehouse; Tyler refuses to believe that's he anything less than real.

[Tiger-growl teeth. C major lips. Bright blue hair and sky-blue hands.]

They sit in silence, both aware of each other. Both relishing the comfort they seek and find in each other's presence.

Tyler feels safe in his presence, and Tyler rarely ever feels safe.

|-/


End file.
